


Do Me A Favor

by sublightsleeper



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, One-sided pining, Sonny gets hurt undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 08:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6747340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublightsleeper/pseuds/sublightsleeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A barisi mini fic for the prompt 'things you said that I wasn't meant to hear'. Sonny gets hurt undercover. Barba stays with him at the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Me A Favor

It is not his job to be here, sitting vigil. And yet, Rafael is the last man standing. Last man sitting. Liv had left with a quiet goodbye, needing to spend time with Noah. Rollins had begged off not long after, thinking of Jesse. Dodds was still at the precinct, working the case. Fin had left with a hand cupped against Rafael’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. _Go home and get some sleep, Barba. He’ll be alright._

They both know he isn’t going anywhere. 

He can’t stop staring at Carisi’s face. Mottled with bruising, jaw swollen, dried blood flaking at the edges of the cut on his cheek. 

If he looks down, Rafael will see that same blood peppered against his suit coat, against the stark white of his shirt. He had been the bait. The one mostly likely to draw the perp out. He liked them rich, white, middle aged and in the closet. 

Rafael was three of those things, and could pass for the fourth. Carisi and Dodds were too young. Fin didn’t fit the profile. A wire taped against the inside of his tie’s knot, a pair of glasses and a worried briefing from Benson, and he was thrown to the sharks. 

Funny, everyone had been worried about him, when in the end he wasn’t even the one who got hurt. 

It was Carisi. Bright, enthusiastic, verbose Carisi who Rafael didn’t even know was playing a john in the background with thick framed glasses and a plaid shirt under a blazer and Rafael had a moment to think 'God, I hope he didn’t dress himself' before everything fell apart. 

It’s all a blur, even as he tries to take those memories apart. A hand pressed against his chest, like his mother used to do when she had to slam on the brakes in their Lincoln Continental when he was a boy. 

Carisi’s voice, low and clear as a bell. _Stay back, alright. I got this._

Fist and feet and the sick sound of blows landing on meat, by the time the team swarms in, Carisi is in a pool of blood on the floor and Rafael doesn’t even remember kneeling next to him, lifting his head so that he doesn’t choke when he coughs on blood. 

He doesn’t remember being in the ambulance either, but there’s no other explanation as to how he got here. 

His ribs hurt. Was that sympathy pain? Or maybe sitting in the same spot too long. Time has gone gooey at the edges, like pulled taffy. Rafael doesn’t know if it’s morning yet, doesn’t care. He’ll stay as long as Carisi sleeps. 

“You need to stay out of trouble.” His voice isn’t much more than a rasp, same as the sound of the dry skin of his hands rubbing together. “It’s hard enough having to see you all the time and not...do anything.”

Because he was a professional, and a prosecutor, and he was smart enough to know better than to lust after straight cops. 

But this was more than just lust. It was a complicated, thorny bramble in his chest that threatened to bleed him dry if he moved too much. This was...well, it was something, alright.

“Do you know I’ve already written a speech for when you get married?” His laughter is a bitter, tired thing. He’s so tired, jesus christ. “I’m not sure what’s worse. The egotistical assumption that you’d ask me to speak at your wedding, or the fact that you don’t even have a girlfriend.”

He’s speaking to the pattern of lights on the floor, rectangles inside of rectangles caused by the streetlights slipping through the slits of the closed blinds. 

“I even bought you a card, for passing the bar. It’s been sitting in my desk since the day you told me.” 

Disjointed, pointless confessions. He wasn’t even Catholic. Redirect. 

“The point is...you make my life hard enough. So do me a favor and take care of yourself, Sonny.”


End file.
